1 and 2 Samuel: Two Grace-Centered Models of Repentance

Well, good morning.

We are studying our way through the book of 2 Samuel.

Today we are in chapters 11 and 12.

Up until this point in 1 Samuel and in 2 Samuel, David has been an absolute hero.

You would think at this point that we should just worship David, forget about Jesus.

I mean, he has been absolutely amazing.

But it turns out that David is like me, and David is like you.

David is not perfect.

So, 2 Samuel 11, 1 through 5, in the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel.

And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah.

But David remained at Jerusalem.

It happened late one afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, and he saw from the roof a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful.

And David sent and inquired about the woman, and one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?

So David sent messengers and took her.

She came to him, and he lay with her.

Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.

Then she returned to her house, and the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, I am pregnant.

So we have six points to make our way through this story.

Point number one is this is that sin often begins with subtle neglect.

Verse 1 is clear, David should have been somewhere else.

But he wasn't.

He didn't magically just end up in bed with Bathsheba.

There were several steps in a short period of time, and it began with subtle neglect of his responsibilities.

What we see with David is we see the common progression of sin.

From seeing to desiring to taking, and then we all know the regretting.

When our girls were little, we would always go out to the Gwinnette County Fair.

Do we have any fair people?

Anybody else, fair people?

It's an interesting lot of people.

We'd go out to the Gwinnette County Fair because Christy and I grew up going to the fair.

We went to the fair every year.

It was a major highlight in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

And so I grew up going to the fair, so we would drive out there, we'd take our girls, there we are, years ago, out at the fair.

That's how happy we looked going in.

You never look that happy coming out of the fair.

Never.

And we'd risk our lives on some rides and we'd eat some horrible food.

We'd always get a funnel cake.

Right?

You walk by the funnel cake stand a few times, you smell it, you see it, it looks so good, and it smells so good.

And I want it, I want it for the girls, you know, I want it for them.

And so I'd buy one and we'd split it up and then I would finish it off.

And never, never did I say, I feel amazing.

I feel fantastic.

I'm gonna have a second funnel cake.

Never happened.

Sin is the funnel cake.

Big promise, a decent time, and then consequences and regret.

After Bathsheba gets pregnant, David keeps digging his hole.

Her husband Uriah was off at war where he should have been.

So David sends for him and he says, Hey, Uriah, go home.

Have a good time, be with your wife.

But Uriah is an upright guy.

He says, How can I go home?

Or people are away fighting.

How can I go home and do that?

No, no, no, I can't go home.

So that attempt fails.

So David tries another method.

I'm gonna get him really drunk.

That'll work.

So he gets Uriah drunk, but still Uriah doesn't go home.

So David digs the hole even deeper.

He sends Uriah back to war with a letter.

2 Samuel 11, 15 through 17.

In the letter he wrote, set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, that he may be struck down and die.

And as Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant men.

And the men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the servants of David among the people fell.

Uriah the Hittite also died.

So point number two is this sin multiplies through deception and control.

Instead of confession, the easiest way out.

I'm a mess.

I messed up, I'm sorry, I need to come clean, I need to confess.

That's the easiest way out.

David digs the hole further.

He goes from adultery to deceit to basically murder.

And so the story goes on, and David hears back that Uriah's dead, 2 Samuel 11, 25 through 27.

David said to the messengers, Thus shall you say to Joab, do not let this matter displease you, for the sword devours now one and now another.

Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it.

And encourage him.

When the wife of Uriah, that's Bathsheba, heard that Uriah, her husband, was dead, she lamented over her husband.

So now she's pregnant from a man who basically forced himself on her, and now her husband's dead.

And when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house.

So now he takes her.

And she became his wife and bore him a son.

But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.

Point number three is that sin hardens our hearts against compassion toward others.

No part of the story is David thinking about Bathsheba.

He's caught up in his own mess so much that he can't extend thought, compassion, any energy toward Bathsheba or her family.

Instead, he minimizes his sin, he normalizes his evil to fit his own needs.

But the story is not over.

God graciously interrupts David's path, which we all need.

God's gracious interruptions.

Now this is a bit of reading, 2 Samuel 12.

We're going to read all of it.

2 Samuel 12, 1 through 7, and then we'll jump to 10 through 15.

And the Lord sent Nathan to David.

See, there's the interruption.

The Lord sent Nathan to David.

He came to him and said to him, There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor.

The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ew lamb which he had bought.

And he brought it up, and it grew up with him, and with his children.

It used to eat his morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him.

Now there came a traveller to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guests who had come to him.

But he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.

So Nathan's telling this story.

Hoping to get to the heart of David, verse 5.

Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said to Nathan, As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die.

And he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity.

Nathan said to David, You are the man.

Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me, is the Lord speaking to David, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.

Thus says the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house, and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun, for you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.

David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord.

And Nathan said to David, The Lord also has put away your sin.

You shall not die.

Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die.

Then Nathan went to his house.

Point number four is this God is gracious to expose our sin.

He is gracious to interrupt us when we're digging our hole.

And God is fully gracious to us in Jesus, all his justice is satisfied.

He does not penalize us for our sin, but he exposes it and he will discipline.

And the repercussions of my sin and your sin, even while we're fully forgiven, the repercussions in the natural world will still exist.

2 Samuel 12, 15 B through 18.

And the Lord afflicted the child that Uriah's wife bore to David, and he became sick.

David therefore sought God on behalf of the child.

And David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground, and the elders of the house stood beside him to raise him from the ground, but he would not, nor did he eat food with them.

On the seventh day the child died.

Point number five is that our lives will have both God's grace and natural consequences.

When I eat the funnel cake or fried Twinkie, did anybody get the fried?

Don't go for the don't that's too much.

God still loves me.

When you eat the funnel cake, God still loves you.

But you're gonna feel like trash.

Right?

Like our lives have the fullness of God's grace, but we'll still have natural consequences of our sin.

David was truly forgiven.

Verse 13 is clear.

The Lord also has put away your sin.

Gone.

Yet the baby dies.

Alright, so what about the baby, right?

The baby didn't do anything in the story.

We can kind of read over the baby, but the baby didn't do anything.

The baby dies, seventh day, the baby didn't do anything.

Well, three points are made theologically about this death of this baby.

The first is that the child's death is not presented as any condemnation on that baby.

The child's death is part of God's public dealing with David as king.

Now that's tough to swallow, but that's how it's presented in the text.

Now, the third point I think is the most applicable to us, and that's that after the child dies, David says, I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.

Now, David's baby's death was discipline, and we know that because God told him it was.

Now, when something horrible happens in your life, I don't know if it's discipline or not.

You don't know if it's discipline or not, but it could be discipline.

Now that's a little bit harder, but that's how the New Testament frames the idea of God disciplining us.

It's not punishment, but it could be discipline.

But what we do know in Christ, because he bore all of our condemnation, every hardship that comes to us now comes through the hands of the loving, sovereign Father.

So it could be discipline, or it may be mystery, or some combination.

That's not easy.

But that's what it means to walk in faith through a broken world.

Now back to the baby.

Here's what Charles Spurgeon said about this baby dying.

Spurgeon said, I cannot conceive that David would have been comforted by the thought, I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.

If he merely meant I shall die, there is far more in that sentence than that.

And what Spurgeon was saying is that this baby is in heaven.

And this brings great comfort to any of us who have lost a baby.

If you've miscarried or you've lost a very young infant, a young child, brings great comfort.

We know where that child is.

The Westminster Confession states elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit.

This is the confidence in God's sovereign grace.

Even to our little ones who have yet to profess anything of faith.

See, this is the only way that David could have said this.

And it brings huge comfort to us if we lose a baby.

So the baby dies.

And finally, David stops digging the hole.

In Psalm 51, we can read of David's repentance.

51.1, have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.

So it's a repentance according to steadfast love.

So the confession is inside of God's steadfast love.

That's also stated in the New Testament in Romans 2, 4, God's kindness leads us to repentance.

That's not what I was taught growing up.

I grew up with a shame-based, fear-motivated repentance.

You better or this, you better or else.

Point number six is God's kindness leads us to repentance.

Pastor and Professor Jack Miller, he used the phrase gospel-kissed repentance.

And what he said is he said, repentance is not self-condemnation.

Repentance is not trying harder.

Repentance is returning to the Father in weakness.

Repentance grows out of assurance of grace, not fear of rejection.

Now, most of y'all know that I love to fish.

Here's a picture of a fish.

I've shown you this picture of this fish before.

That's a cutthroat trout.

That is my favorite fish I've ever caught.

I love that fish.

I think about that fish all the time.

And the reason why I think about that fish all the time, it was the first fish years ago that I caught all by myself, my own gear, no guide, no friend.

I saw the fish.

I spotted it, I hunted it, I cast to it, I hooked it, I netted it, I did it all.

First fish I ever did that with.

So I think about this fish all the time.

I also think about this fish when I think about repentance.

Because as badly as I wanted to pull this fish out of the water, this fish knows nothing except the water.

Everything it knows about life, about how he works and he swims and he eats, is inside the context of water.

My point, of course, is that in Jesus, everything we know is in the context of God's kindness.

The water of God's kindness.

It's all kindness.

So if we're talking about repentance, it's inside of God's kindness.

So I want to give you two frameworks of repentance.

The first is Jack Miller's framework of repentance.

There's in a book called Repentance years, decades ago.

And Jack Miller is a theological guy, pastor, professor.

If you think before Tim Keller, Paul Tripp, Scotty Smith, before this is like the grandfather of grace in the 70s.

And Jack Miller had a framework he called the branch and root framework for repentance.

Miller says Jesus does not merely trim our branches, our behaviors, he goes after our heart, the root, because God is after the heart.

So it might look something like this.

Anger may be the branch.

That's a problem.

That's going to have consequences.

But control may be the root.

Anxiety may be the branch.

Unbelief may be the root.

People pleasing may be the branch.

A hunger for approval may be the root.

And Miller said, as we grow in our assurance of being a beloved son and daughter of God through Jesus alone, not our record or performance, the more we grow in that assurance, the more we're able to move past the branches and get to the root.

Out of that, Tim Keller develops his idol framework for repentance.

That's in his book, Counterfeit Gods.

At least it's the clearest there.

It's throughout all his writings and teachings.

The clearest in counterfeit gods.

He said this: an idol is anything.

So when we're thinking about the root, Keller goes, all right, the root, we're talking about idols.

So this is where this idol framework comes from.

Keller says, an idol is anything we look to for what only God can ultimately give us identity, security, worth, control, comfort, or hope.

So success, family, approval, work can all become idols.

Idols function beneath our behaviors.

It's the heart craving something.

So we have our surface sin, our behaviors, and then we have this deep idol, the root, which is becoming a false savior to us.

And Keller gives us good diagnostic questions like, what do I feel I must have?

What if lost makes life feel meaningless?

What functional savior am I trusting?

And the solution is to replace the false savior with the true savior.

Which would go like this.

Jesus gives me the approval I seek.

Jesus gives me the security I crave.

Jesus gives me the identity I chase.

Jesus gives me the worth I try to earn.

Back in the fall, I went on a father-daughter retreat with my oldest daughter, and we did a truss fall.

Have you ever done a truss fall?

Like, you know, you're in a group.

Okay, but it's all there's a group of us as dads and daughters, and the platform is probably six feet tall, and you climb up a little ladder, you get the platform, you get your you get your heels on the on the edge of the platform like this, and the group's all down below you, about six feet below you, and you cross your arms and your phone is just straight as a board, and you fall straight back.

Well, we all go, and the leader's saying, you know, we're gonna catch you, it's no problem.

There's one guy, big dude.

One guy's a big dude.

Just a big dude.

Okay, I'm a skinny dude.

I didn't worry too much about it.

Big dude was a little worried about it.

Honestly, I was a little worried about it, let's say the truth.

Uh but the leader's like, no, we got you.

We are enough for you.

And big dude goes, we catch him.

No big deal.

Because our supply was enough for him.

We never wavered, we didn't get tired, we didn't run away, we caught everyone.

And that's an image of repentance.

Falling backward into that which is enough for you.

That's what Jack Miller said.

Repentance is our ongoing calling to collapse on Jesus, acknowledging our need and receiving his supply.

Our ongoing calling to collapse on Jesus.

So we have repentance as a becoming a Christian, and then we live the life of repentance, which is not shame-based and it's not fear-motivated.

It's born out of the assurance of who we are as sons and daughters.

Not our performance and not our record.

So we're free to repent as a process of growth, as a process of healing.

I close reading David's repentant words in Psalm 51.

Psalm 51, 10 through 12.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.

If you have any questions about this sermon or you would like to be prayed for, I'll be down front afterward.

Love to pray with you.

Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we're so grateful that you don't leave us in our mess, but you interrupt us in your sovereign grace.

We welcome more interruptions.

For we know that our hearts are not always where they should be.

Our behaviors are not where they should be.

Our branches can be messy because there's a root that needs to be dealt with.

Would you shine light on that this morning?

Would we feel even more free in Jesus to repent more?

To fall backward into your sufficiency of forgiveness and love and transformation.

Call us to a life of repentance that we might be all the more free as your sons and daughters.

In Jesus.

Amen.